Pros
• Great and friendly colleagues • Office location. NSTP is one of the best software parks in Islamabad, in terms of both networking and environment. You'll get a chance to network with a lot of different companies and people here • Good opportunity to learn, but only for a short while. Whatever there is to learn, you'll learn within the first few months. • 2 work from home's allowed each month, along with separate medical and paid leaves. • Office timings aren't so strict and there aren't any salary deductions if you are late (yet!)
Cons
• Extremely low salaries, lowest in the market in-fact. The company will offer you a somewhat decent offer and expect you to work on that salary for the next 5 years. • No salary increments or bonuses. There is a new yearly increment policy, effective from June to June, that is "performance based". However, as of posting this review in the final weeks of July, no one in the company has received an increment. The company will repeatedly make excuses and delay the increments for months and in the end give you a fraction of what you were promised. Various high level employees have left because of this behaviour from the company. • No employee benefits, such as travel allowance, lunch expense, etc. You do get medical insurance which covers only you and your spouse with no IPD or OPD coverage. • Micromanagement. The manager of the Pakistan office, while being a decent person, is an awful manager and does a lot of micromanagement. Expect your screens to be monitored all day as the seating arrangement has been done in a way so that he can watch everyone's screens in the office. If you open whatsapp, or any other website you will receive lengthy paragraphs from him telling you to focus on your work. You cannot wear headphones, and you cannot open anything that isn't related to work. Simply put, this isn't an office, this is a school. • No career growth. The company only offers dry promotions, where if a senior employee leaves, their replacement isn't hired, instead the junior employee will be given the senior employees responsibilities (even if they are underqualified) without any raise in salary. Additionally, you will not have your own team, as any and all employees will report to the manager and not you. • The manager of the Pakistan office has completely cut off any communication with the Singapore team, before everyone had direct 1-to-1 communication, it was one of the best benefits about this company. Now, if you try to talk with someone without his permission you again receive lengthy paragraphs about breaking the chain of command. Its quite clear that even the Singapore team is fed up of this. You will not be included in any meeting where your work is presented to higher management, if you try to push your inclusion to the meeting it will somehow get cancelled at the last minute • The manager has a lack of trust in his team and that creates a cycle of unproductivity and bad work ethic. He has never once motivated or appreciated employees. Good work is always left unrewarded, and bad work is exemplified. Whenever something goes wrong he has a habit of blaming the entire team and not accepting the responsibility himself. Whenever something goes right, he's always at the forefront to get appreciated by the higher management. He also considers work from home to be a leave, if you take both of them consecutively, expect to be reprimanded. • Extremely high expectations from senior management. Any meeting you have with them will always be them complaining how your work has been disappointing and that you must do better, completely disregarding all the effort and hard work you may have been putting for the company. There is also a saying from them that "everyone in the company should know how to do everything", so a UI Designer should know how to code the firmware of their machines, basically. • Overtime. Compulsory unpaid overtime. The manager loves to sit in the office after 6 and will force everyone to do the same. If you're going to join this company, "Please pause your personal life", the company work is more important. But don't worry, in return you'll get to eat free pizza (sometimes) • Lack of resources from the company. The company will provide you with the necessary software's that you might need to work, but other than that don't expect anything else. No additional monitors, or any other resources you might need to increase your work efficiency will be provided. • There is also an extremely laughable office supplies policy where only 1 box of biscuits will be opened every week, if the biscuits run out no new box will be opened until the next week. Office supplies run out and are left empty until the next month as "the company does not have to budget to get more". • The manager refuses to hire any female employees as according to him they won't agree to sit until late night at the office and do overtime, So if you are a female applying to this company, good luck.